Don't Bother They're Here
by S.K. Millz
Summary: What if the fate of the world hinged upon a game of basketball?
1. I

He came in through the revolving glass doors and stood in the center of the lobby and warily surveyed his surroundings. Elevators to the left. Stairwell on the right. Front desk straight ahead. Muzak. A golden chandelier dangling from the high vaulted ceilings. The floors a cold gray marble. A small arrangement of tables and chairs and a discontented family sorting through its luggage in silence.

One by one he lifted his white tennis shoes and examined the dirtless soles. Perfect. Pristine. He straightened the brim of his large black duster and shouldered his travelling case and calmly heeltoed the length of the atrium. When he reached the front desk he placed his enormous palms flat on the counter and contentedly awaited the attention of the young redhaired receptionist, her eyes hidden behind the yellowed pages of a cheap romance novel. Sensing his gaze she quickly set the book down, brushed the hair out of her eyes and sat up straight, readying her fingertips at the keyboard in front of her. "Can I help you?"

Gossamer nodded mechanically. "How does your computer work?"

"Excuse me?"

"What does it do?"

"It keeps a record of everyone who's checked in and how long they've got to check out."

"May I see it?"

The receptionist blinked. "Why would you need to see it?"

"I'm looking for someone."

"Well sir we're not allowed to give out that sort of information. Security purposes. You understand."

"No. I don't understand," Gossamer replied, straightfaced. "There's a basketball team booked here for the weekend. I need to know what rooms they're staying in."

"I'm sorry sir. That's confidential without proper identification. Now is there anything else I can do for you?"

He studied her for a long time. "I'd like a room please," he said at last. "One night."

She eyed him suspiciously but didn't protest any further.

He paid in cash and took his cardkey. Then he sauntered down the leftmost hallway and slipped around the corner and called the elevator. When it arrived he slid a black number two pencil into the metal doortrack and left it there. He took the stairs.

Six floors up. He located his room, swiped the cardkey and went inside, setting his bag down at the foot of the bed and pulling back the heavy canvas drapes to draw in the sunlight.

He unzipped the bag and casually began emptying its contents onto the bed. The butt of a large black fully automatic assault rifle. The stock. The barrel. Three full clips. A long bottlenecked muzzle suppressor. Lasersight. It took him less than a minute to finish loading, securing and assembling everything. Then he went into the bathroom and poured himself a cold glass of tapwater and stood guzzling it down, watching himself idly in the mirror. Thinking.

When he was finished he left the bathroom and shut off all the lights and got his rifle and went out into the hallway. Red felt carpeting. Dull beige wallpaper. Layers of dust. Generic oilpaint still lifes framed in boxy bronze. Sharp empty corners. Air conditioner whirring placidly overhead. Elevator still grounded. He turned and padded down the hall and around the corner, cradling the assault rifle in his arms, eyes glazing up and down the corridor. An unattended maid's cart stood across from an open room. He stalked over and examined it. Crisp folded white towels. Bedsheets. Bottled cleaning solvents. Rolls of tissue. Nothing useful.

The door was open just a crack. He shouldered his rifle and kicked it in the rest of the way.

"_¡Detente! ¡Detente! ¡Ayúdeme!"_

He blindfired three hollow silent rounds into the bluish darkness and the short heavyset maid staggered back and went down like a stone. Then he pulled the little cart inside the room and shut and locked the door behind him and flicked on the lightswitch.

She lay in a heap on the floor. A geyser of blood streaming from the gaping hole in her neck. Pooling around her head. Blackening the soft beige carpet. She tried to speak but the words would not come out. He placed one foot over her gushing throat and held it there, gazing calmly into her darting, rapidly fading eyes.

"_Vaya dormir,"_ he said. Soothingly.

When she was gone he slipped off his sneakers and sat down on the bed and studied them under the soft yellow light. Specks of bright red blood on either of them.

He went into the bathroom and filled the sink up with hot water and scrubbed them thoroughly with a bar of soap before the blood dried. When he was finished he rubbed them down with a handtowel and left them on the floor next to the radiator. Then he set to sifting through the maid's bulging apron pockets. He found a map of the building with several rooms circled in bold red marker, presumably the ones she had been responsible for. Master cardkey. A folded list of names and room numbers. Wrinkled. Stapled together. He unfolded it on the bed and stood studying it for a long time. Names he did not recognize. Hundreds of lives. Hundreds of concerns. Condensed down into tiny insignificant blocks of text. He turned the page. His eyes froze at the top of the list.

The one name he did recognize. Eighth floor. Middle of the pack.

He folded the list up and shoved it in his pocket along with the maid's cardkey and put his damp shoes on and left the room. The elevator was still trapped in the lobby. It would be hours before they discovered the obstruction. He took the stairs up to the eighth floor and tracked down the room he was looking for and swiped the master cardkey and went in.

Lights off. Nobody home. Suitcases gaping open. Orlando Magic Basketball. Oversized clothes strewn about the floor. Oversized bedsheets pulled back. Minibar untouched. Bible bookmarked on the nightstand. Laptop. MP3 player. Cellphone. The essentials. He propped the rifle against the wall and began searching through the room for paperwork. He found a dayplanner in the top drawer of the nightstand and sat down on the unmade bed and began leafing through it.

* * *

The dark blue Suburban rode shakily down the bumpy dirt road, front tires bobbing up and down like buoys, back tires kicking up clouds of swirling gray dust, white hot sunlight glinting off the tinted windows. Red brake lights flashed and the wheelbase screeched and the truck ground to a creaking halt next to a large mound of dirt at the top of the sunwashed driveway.

Daffy killed the engine, opened the door and stood with one foot on the gravelly road and the other planted firmly inside the truck, eyes dancing solemnly across the blazing horizon. Heatwaves. A small farmhouse stood at the end of the driveway. Faded wooden roofing. Empty dustchoked windows adorned with crooked shutters. Screen doors. A rickety hardwood patio jutting out from the front of the house, decorated with a pair of weatherworn rocking chairs arranged at an angle. Behind the farmhouse he could make out a large gray barn, a rusted tractor trailer and several acres of sprawling, droughtworn pasture dotted with dark shrubs and grazing cattle.

Daffy sighed and removed his flatbilled baseball cap, mopping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Then he pulled the hat back down over his brows, hopped out and slammed the door on the Suburban. He walked around the front of the truck and opened the side door and removed a bulging black duffle bag from underneath the glove compartment, checking the pockets as he slipped the padded strap over his shoulder. He clicked his tongue. A spotted jack russell terrier came bounding out of the backseat into his arms.

"Easy," he chuckled, setting the dog flat on the ground beside him, shutting and locking the door. The dog circled his heels, tongue lolling, tail whipping excitedly from side to side, chocolate brown eyes wide and glassy. Then it froze and flopped down on its haunches and stared up at him panting. Daffy smiled, clicking his tongue again as he set off at a leisurely clip toward the lonesome farmhouse, dirt and gravel crackling underfoot, the little dog bouncing along behind him.

When he reached the mailbox he paused and fished a cutout newspaper article from his jacket pocket and slowly unfolded it. "Aliens killed cattle, claims farmowner," read the boldface headline. The article itself was barely a footnote. His dark eyes darted from the grayscale photograph below the title to the dilapidated farmhouse in front of him and back again.

"Definitely the right place," he muttered, stuffing the wrinkled leaflet back into his pocket, a slight breeze ruffling his black feathers.

Adjusting the shoulderstrap he leisurely crossed the front lawn and climbed the creaking patio steps, stopping to wipe his shoes at the doormat. "You are here," it declared in washed out cursive lettering. He examined it for a moment. Then he cupped his hands over his eyes and leaned forward and peered through the wiremesh screen door.

He could make out a small living room and a long narrow hallway. Orange light bleeding through the curtained windows. Peeling yellow wallpaper. An old burgundy armchair. A boxy television set with long spindly rabbit ears poking through the top. Dusty floorlamps. A serene grandfather clock ticking and tocking somewhere in the corner.

"Anyone home?" He knocked three times. Then he turned and threw an anxious glance back toward his truck. A tall posturing crow had swooped down and perched itself on the edge of the roof. It studied him through cold blank irises and calmly beat its wings. The dog sank onto its hind legs and sat panting, staring off into the distance.

When he turned to knock again he was greeted by a round sunken humorless face gazing tiredly down at him through the rusty chickenwire screen. Wrinkled and shaded. Expectant yet indifferent. Daffy quickly shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and shuffled his feet and cleared his throat to mask his surprise.

"Sorry to bother you," he said. "I'm looking for a Mr. Cecil Turtle."

The man nodded.

"My name's Daffy Duck," he went on. "I'm a columnist for _Milky Way Monthly. _I'd like to ask you some questions."

"Some what?"

"Some questions."

"About what?"

Daffy paused, eyebrows upturned. "Sightings. Close encounters. Unidentified flying objects."

"That's some lisp you've got there boy," grunted the tortoise. "You some kind of a dandy or somethin?"

"No sir. I'm a journalist."

"Well then why don't you talk like one?"

"I've always talked this way sir. Most of us do."

"Who? Journalists?"

"Ducks sir. Ducks."

"Why's that?"

He jerked a thumb toward his beak. "No teeth," he grumbled. "But that's beside the point."

"And just what is the point?"

"I've got some questions for you sir. And I'd appreciate some sensible answers."

"You gettin fresh with me boy?"

"No sir. Just curious."

"I ain't never seen no aliens afore. If that's what you're askin."

Daffy grimaced. "Funny," he said, rifling through his pockets. "According to the locals you've borne witness to at least three alien sightings in the past ten months. You're telling me that's a misprint?" He extended the cutout newspaper article to the screen and watched the farmer's small brown eyes narrow to slits.

A hawk's shrill cry pierced the air.

The tortoise folded his short stubby arms. A knowing smirk slunk over his features, the wrinkled green skin pulled tightly across his angular jaw. "Is that your dog?" he said. "What's its name?"

Daffy froze. Then he turned his shoulders and glanced down at the dog, half expecting to see it sprawled out on the deck or run through with a spear. "Chester," he replied cautiously.

"Beautiful animal. Well trained too. I can tell. Think he'd come if I called him?"

Daffy's heart hammered inside his chest. "Look. If it's not a good time I can come back whenever."

"Just what is it you want from me? An interview? How come I never heard of your magazine before?"

"We're an alternative publication."

"Alternative? What's that mean?"

"It means we're only available through mailorder."

The tortoise frowned and stood studying Daffy for a long time. "I'll do your interview," he grunted after what felt like several minutes.

"Just name the time and the place," Daffy replied, exhaling deeply.

Cecil thought about that for a moment, eyes rolling up toward the ceiling. "Tomorrow night. Out back." He gestured in the direction of the barn. "Nine o'clock."

"Nine o'clock."

"I'll be there."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

Daffy thanked him and gathered the dog up in his arms and jogged all the way back to his truck without a second thought. He clambered in and gunned the engine and peeled out onto the highway. Air conditioner cranked up full blast.

* * *

Bugs pulled his jeans on and slid his arms into his shirt and sat down at the small round coffee table next to the patio door. Morning light punching sharply through the horizontal windowblinds. A semitruck idling somewhere in the parking lot outside. He ran a stiff hand through the disheveled fur on top of his head and ruffled his long floppy ears and sighed contemptibly. He glanced over at the cheap double bed where Lola lay facedown, spreadeagled, still asleep, head buried in her pillow, sheets pulled about her waist in an unkempt wrinkled mess. He closed his eyes.

His cellphone buzzed, lighting up and gliding toward the edge of the table. He picked it up and scanned the name on the glowing bluish readout. Reverend, it said.

He shut the phone off and jammed it in his pocket and laid his aching head down on the table with a groan. Tired. Grumpy. Hungover. He sat like that for a long time. When he finally looked up Lola was staring at him from across the room, halflidded hazel eyes glimmering in the darkness.

"Morning," she mumbled.

"Somethin like that."

"What time is it?"

"Ten to twelve."

"No it's not."

"Roll over and see for yourself."

She lifted her head off the pillow and turned to look at the alarm clock. The bright green digits flipped forward another minute. "I haven't slept in this late since college," she sighed.

"Not even on the weekends?"

"It is the weekend."

"I mean weekends past."

"Some of us have commitments Bugs."

"Yeah. Right. Some of us do."

He went into the cramped bathroom and threw off the clothes he had just put on and ran the shower until long white plumes of steam began creeping around the translucent curtains and streaking the surface of the mirror. He got in and stood under the scalding hot water with his head down and his eyes closed and slowly rinsed the pungent scent of marijuana and cigarette smoke from his short gray fur. Last night's remnants. Bad dreams.

When he was finished he toweled off and put his clothes back on and used his palm to clear a small ovalshaped window in the fogged up mirror. He stood hunched over the sink. Back arched. Staring at himself. Overanxious. His mind as hazy as his own reflection. He slid the silver wedding ring back onto his left hand and tacitly flexed his fingers.

He brushed past Lola on his way out of the bathroom. While she showered he gathered what few odds and ends he'd brought along with him in a small rectangular satchel and took a seat at the foot of the bed, burying his head in his hands. He waited for her.

The cellphone vibrated in his jeanspocket. Same caller. "What do you want?" he groaned without answering. Two missed calls.

Lola emerged from the bathroom several minutes later, a damp blue towel draped around her midsection. She stood statuesquely in the open doorway and reached up and tied her ears back with an orange bandana. Bugs looked at her and frowned.

"Get dressed," he said.

"Why? You in a hurry?"

"Somethin like that."

She grimaced, admiring her shoulders in the soft artificial light. "Afraid your wife might come looking for us?"

"Maybe."

She crossed the room and sat down on the bed beside him. "Or have you had enough of me for one day?"

"It's been a couple of days."

"I know. I still miss you."

"I know." He glanced at her eyes. Then he looked away.

"When will you call me again?"

"I call you everyday."

"That's business."

"What is this? Pleasure?"

"If you want it to be."

"It isn't."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm just sayin it isn't easy."

"I never said it would be."

"I know."

"Is there anything you're not telling me?"

"No. Now get dressed. It's time to go."

She studied him coldly. Then she got up and unraveled the towel and let it drop to the floor around her feet and pulled her clothes on right in front of him. Neither of them spoke for several minutes after that.

Lola swept some loose belongings into her purse. A hairbrush. A Blackberry. A small bottle of handlotion. The pill. She set her thin wireframe glasses down across the bridge of her nose and put on her shoes and stood watching Bugs as he glided dismally across the room toward the door and with one hand wrenched it open.

Cameras. Tape recorders. Microphones. Lights. Reporters. Everywhere. They overwhelmed him.

He staggered back, shielding his eyes. But it was too late to shut them out. Lola screamed.

"Why'd you do it?"

"What's her name?"

"Who is she?"

"Is this the first time this has happened?"

"Is she pregnant?"

"How long has this been going on?"

"Does this mean your marriage is on the rocks?"

"How will this affect your reputation?"

"Is your wife going to sue?"

"Do you expect a low turnout at the box office this weekend?"

"Do you consider yourself a role model?"

"What do you have to say to all the kids who look up to you?"

"How do you respond to your wife's accusations?"

"Is it a divorce?"

"Are you a pariah?"

"Where do you go from here?"

All at once a blanket of silence fell over the jostling crowd of onlookers.

His heart sank. The cellphone trembled in his fist. He gazed down into his palm. Reverend, it said.


	2. II

Wily Coyote lay flat on his stomach, shoulders squared, unwavering yellowblack eyes aligned down the sight of a highpowered bolt action sniper rifle. Surrounded on all sides by giant windcut rock formations. Shielded from the noontime sun. He wrinkled his small black nose and wet his lips and gently cleared his throat. Then he thumbed the focus wheel on his riflescope and glassed the colorless terrain below.

He lay watching the sharp blue horizon for a long time as a dry sandpapery breeze pulled through his scruffy mudbrown fur and clipped the icy sweat running down his upturned brow. A ringnecked buzzard stood perched atop a tall gray cactus in the distance. He lined its small head up in the needlethin crosshairs and allowed his index finger to hover temptingly over the trigger, but he didn't take the shot.

Hours slunk by, the beating orange sun clawing at his back, his forearms, his scalp, his snout. Flies snarled about his head, fluttering weightlessly in the wind. Shadows rolled on past him.

Movement on the horizon. A hazy red dustcloud. One mile out. Maybe less. Streaking toward him. Gaining speed. He cocked his shoulders and slowly readjusted his aim. His heart raced but he kept his cool. He lowered the sight, measuring the distance. Approximating. A thousand calculations blustering simultaneously through his head.

He fired and the rifle recoiled with a long hollow whooshing sound.

The scope dropped back into position. His eyes refocused. There was a bright orange flash and the speeding red thing ground to a halt in the middle of the clearing as if slamming into an invisible brick wall.

He shouldered his rifle and got to his knees and gazed excitedly down into the canyon, admiring his handiwork. When the dust cleared he sat up straight and wet his lips again and stood glassing the rocky terrain below. The bird lay dead in a heap between two gnarled cactuses. Shot through the neck. Dark red blood speckling the cracked colorless dirt. A hardedged wind dragging through its short gray feathers.

He put away his rifle and climbed down from the steep terracotta outcropping and made his way out across the canyon floor, bitter rocksalt sifting through the humid air, whistling past his ears.

The roadrunner lay right where he'd shot it. He shooed away two circling vultures and bagged the kill in an empty burlap potato sack and scoured the dirt for the bolt but he came up empty.

Crossing the desert floor was like walking on hot coals. When he arrived back at camp he sat down inside his tent and wrapped his bare feet in bandages. Then he went back out into the punishing sun and built a small bonfire in the ashblack pit. He skinned the bird and stripped away its insides and hacked off its head and its legs and roasted it over the crackling yellow flames.

It was delicious, if a little overdone.

When he was finished he stamped out the fire and walked down to the edge of the plateau and just stood there allowing his dark wandering eyes to trace the vast sweeping horizon below. Sundown. The long clear sky gleaming orange and pink. Glittering white stars just beginning to bleed through high misty cirrus clouds. Rolling gray desert as far as the eye could see. Not a soul within a hundred square miles. Silent. Empty. Only the dust and the wind and the furious heat to keep him company.

Today was the day.

When night fell he rode the maintenance lift up to the highest peak and slipped on his white labcoat and set to work.

The launchpad was empty. A giant flat octagon and towering thirty foot steel gantry. Black metal. Handmade. Balanced precariously in the middle of the narrow plateau. Creaking in the blustery wind like the hull of a huge seaswept vessel.

He crossed the launchpad and climbed the steep winding stairwell to the top of the gantry, heavy metallic footfalls reverberating for miles in the vacuous night air. He punched some flashing red buttons on the command console and watched as the launchpad churned and sputtered to life with an emphatic roar. Out of the ground rose an enormous knifeshaped rocketship like a flightless phoenix embracing the vastness of the night sky. Steel grinding against steel. A low rumble. The entire cliff shaking violently. Then nothing. Chipped streaking orange paint layering slick colorless wrought iron. Fifty feet high. Needlenose penetrating the cloudless black canopy above.

He went back down and paced a wide slow circle around the gilded rocket base, clipboard and ballpoint pen in hand. Damage inspection. Onboard systems check. Fuel and propulsion survey. All clear. Diagnostics. Geometry. Vertical flightpath. Good to go.

Last but not least he entered five simple words into the square monitor on the internal CPU. Then he signed and addressed them and closed the hatch. All the hard work, all the triumphs and all the failures, all the blood sweat and tears came down to this.

One shot.

At liftoff the rocket appeared stable. Wily hid behind a giant heat shield just below the gantry, peering up into the blinding white light through a tiny rectangular fiberglass window in the reinforced steel wall. Tears streaming down his cheeks. The din was incredible. Like a thousand primed howitzers firing at once. Like the loudest sound he'd ever heard multiplied out into infinity. Lingering in his ears. Like static. A shockwave. An incessant ringing with no end.

Blue flames licking red stone. A great sphere of hot silver smoke expanding out across the clear night sky like ashen oceanwaves. The plateau trembled and split. Rocks shattered beneath his feet. The gantry buckled and collapsed, disintegrating into dust, blowing away into the night. The launchpad sizzled and liquefied in the charring heat and pooled into a thick bubbling black soup. A smell like rotten eggs.

Sweat pouring down his brow. Fire everywhere. What the inside of an oven must've felt like. Wily dove for the emergency ladder and slid down to a securer level, ears ringing wildly, eyes clouded by huge glowing brightspots. He watched the platform crumble above him and dodged a giant smoldering boulder as it spiraled down toward the endless desert floor below. The wind nearly took him. He grabbed hold of the nearest cliff face and dug his fingertips into the hard rock wall and clung on for dear life.

He waited there for a long time. Teeth chattering. Heart thundering. Eyes held shut. Too scared to move. Too scared to think. Mind blank as a slate. He refused to look, even when the desperate rumbling finally ceased and the smoke cleared and the low resonant drone of desert crickets returned to fill the air.

And that's when the rocket, now but a small red streak high in the cavernous black sky, broke apart midflight and came plummeting back to Earth.

* * *

The crater glowed a dark translucent orange. Debris everywhere. A hollow rustladen cylinder. One of the smaller pieces. Buckling the hard gray caliche like wet clay. Thick sheets of steam peeling off the charred metal surface. Crackling in the cool evening breeze.

Taz spotted it from the road. He'd watched it tumble from the sky like a meteorite and crashland at the bottom of a long shallow embankment near the empty roadside. He pulled his dirtstreaked denim jacket tighter around his shoulders and stood studying it from a distance. Then he pushed his rickety shopping cart full of cannedgoods down into the valley and covered it with a wrinkled blue tarp and set off toward the rubble without a thought in his head.

The ground was warm even for the desert and he could smell hot ash on the air. When he reached the steaming wreckage he stopped and stared up at it for a moment, his large jaw gaping absentmindedly, baring his pointed yellow teeth, beads of saliva gobbing at the corners of his mouth. He took a slight step forward, his torn canvas sneakers setting in the dry orange dirt. Sizzling. He poked the giant tin can with his index finger and withdrew sharply, pain splaying rapidly up his arm.

The thing lurched forward and he staggered back, losing his balance, stumbling to the ground, clutching his hand. A rusted hatchdoor swung open above him with a piercing metallic shriek. Behind it a large square monitor. Cracked from corner to corner. Dripping with static. A message. Still barely legible. The words he couldn't read.

_Dear Mars,_

_Take me away from here._

_Wily Coyote_


	3. III

He drove to the top of the ramp and parked his car facing the chainlink fence and got out and pocketed his thin gray sunglasses and stood squinting in the bright midday sun. Flatbilled Dodgers cap squashing his long flat ears he trotted down the winding access ramp and called the elevator and rode it on down as far as it would go.

When the bell tolled and the doors reeled open he walked out into the empty foyer and followed the long sloping corridor all the way down to the landing and stood hunched over the rail and looked out on the vibrant sanctuary below.

At least a hundred guests in attendance this afternoon. Pews crammed with darkened faces all crooking and swaying to the rhythm of the pastor's voice as he paced the glimmering altar draped in long crimson robes. Bugs closed his eyes. He could feel that familiar coolness in the air, the velvety scent of burning candles wafting smartly up through the arches. He stooped to retie his shoelaces and listened.

"Let's talk about progress…" the preacher shouted.

"_Hablemos acerca del progreso…" _mumbled his interpreter.

"Since the very beginning…"

"_Desde el principio…"_

"We have made progress…"

"Progress…" cried someone from the audience.

"_Hemos hecho progreso…"_

"But progress is not a straight line…"

"_Pero el progreso no es una l__í__nea recta…"_

"It's an arc…"

"_Es un arco…"_

"And every arc has its upswing…"

"_Y cada arco tiene un ascenso…"_

"And every arc has its downswing…"

"_Y cada arco tiene su descenso…"_

Behind the pastor and his interpreter he could see the ushers preparing a long flat basin filled to the rim with a shimmering gold powder. They combed through it with a small round sieve and stirred it and set the basin in a square wooden stand at the head of the altar and withdrew to the front of the aisle.

"We've been rising up for centuries…"

"_Nos hemos elevado por siglos…"_

"But now we've reached our peak…"

"_Pero ahora que hemos alcanzado nuestra cima…"_

"And soon we'll be rising down…"

"_Y pronto empearemos a descender…"_

A dozen bronzecolored banners hung from the cavernous ceiling, each emblazoned with the stark red insignia of the Convent of Varicella. He could remember staring at them long and hard while seated next to his wife in Sunday service only a week ago. That familiar fivepoint star splashed across a dark red sphere. That silent symbol gleaming faintly in his memory like some weird dream skittering to the outskirts of his mind.

"Do not fear the blackness…"

"_No teman a la oscuridad…"_

"Do not fear the bottom…"

"_No le teman al fondo…"_

He slipped down the stairs unnoticed and stood in the back of the sanctuary well out of view.

"Our benefactors will return…"

"Return…"

"_Nuestros benefactores regresar__á__n…"_

"Soon they will return…"

"_Pronto ellos regresar__á__n…"_

"Like Christ they will return…"

"_Volver__á__n igual que Cristo…"_

"And we the true believers…"

"_Y nosotros los verdaderos creyentes…"_

"Shall inherit this Earth."

"_Heredaremos la Tierra."_

The pastor's arms were raised and the pews emptied as Bugs stood watching from the shadows. They formed a line down the center of the aisle and filled their hands with the powder from the pulpit and one by one they took their whispered blessings and hurled the stuff high into the air in sacrament and threw back their heads and breathed in the pastor's warm consecrated words. Then they turned and marched on back to their seats covered in gold glitter and all of them were smiling and laughing with their friends and family and those who came alone were smiling and laughing with each other and the dim orange candlelight seemed to dance and flicker and revel in the excitement while the great brass pipe organs sang the humble mood and shuddered in the crisp burnished air.

Bugs lowered his eyes and walked on down the side aisle unseen and descended the stairwell and followed it into the basement.

He padded quickly through the narrow whitewashed halls, grainy fluorescent lights buzzing coldly in the low tiled ceiling. Down here everything smelled of bleach and slick linoleum and lukewarm coffee. He knew the way. He'd tread these gleaming endless halls more times than he could count. Everything was familiar. The unsubtle squelch of his waxywhite tennisshoes like shrill sirens announcing his approach. Spare quarters from the drivethrough lane at Burger King rattling softly in his deep denim shortspockets. Bland windowless doorways swinging opened and closed. The hollow clop of strutting highheels echoing sharply in the distance.

Through giant doubledoors the hallway fed into a cramped officespace lined with empty tables and chairs and children's playthings and decorative philodendrons and dated magazines all wrinkled and frayed. The heavyset black receptionist eyed him spitefully before handing him a worn clipboard and pen scoped in white masking tape. He signed his name and slumped gracelessly into a small plastic chair against the far wall, folding his arms with a certain insecure guardedness, eyes flicking sporadically from left to right, floor to ceiling.

He watched the wallclock make its rounds and wondered wordlessly whether he'd ever see his wife outside of court again. Then he wondered if she'd recorded last night's game the way he'd asked her to. Then he wondered what Joe Torre and Jeff Kent and Manny Ramirez were up to at the moment.

"Ben," the receptionist grumbled after a while, setting the phone back in its cradle.

He looked up.

"Reverend Wolf will see you now."

He nodded and rocked back and forth in his seat as if it took great effort to uproot himself from his shallow thoughts and stood rigidly to his feet and stretched out his arms and breathed a long heavy sigh of resignation before trudging solemnly up to the Reverend's office.

At the doorstep he paused. Then he headed on in.

"I tried to warn you," Wolf insisted, seated contentedly behind a massive regal desk cluttered with loose papers and bookmarked texts and glossy antique replicas of ancient artifacts.

"I know," Bugs muttered, flopping into the sunken armchair opposite the Reverend, eyes swirling dismally about the room.

"You wouldn't pick up."

"I wasn't in the mood."

Bugs hated this room. Something about it felt bunkered and claustrophobic and oppressive. Windowless walls coated in dark red paint. Everything trimmed in gold and silver like the vault below some dusty mausoleum. Bookshelves crammed with indistinct hardcovers all pasty blue and black and green and red, spines cracked and wrinkled from decades of overuse, passed from one hand to the next.

Light flooded every square inch of the office, glowing with a soft yelloworange flush which seemed to hang dully in the air and glint off swirling specks of dust and age the Reverend's low angular features to a permanent scowl, packing his deep round eyesockets with hard bruiselike shadows.

Wolf's shoulders fell. "This is a disgrace."

"Somethin like that."

"And to think that I defended you."

"What do you want me to say?"

"You could start by explaining yourself."

"Okay. I slept with her. Four times."

"Four times."

"At least."

"Please. Don't burden me with the details."

"I thought you might say that."

"You'd be a bum if you didn't look so good on camera."

Bugs snorted. "Yeah. You could say that."

"Just how devoted are you?"

"Devoted enough."

"To the congregation or to yourself?"

"I'd say it varies."

"You never did believe. You always had your wife for that."

"I've tried."

Wolf sat studying the scrawny dullfaced rabbit for a long time. Then he cleared his throat and leaned forward and sat cradling his chin with his elbows propped stiffly on his desk.

"Ben let me explain something to you. A church is more than just a place of worship. It's a place of business. And like any major corporation our church is especially vulnerable to public opinion. Therein lies a conundrum, for most if not all religions are characterized by a particular set of deities or supernatural beings. Islam has its Allah, its Muhammad. Christianity and Catholicism have their Christ. The Greeks and Romans and countless ancient civilizations around the world worshipped a wide variety of allpowerful spirits. We too were once characterized by our beliefs, but that all changed the moment you became a part of our congregation. You and your insidious wife and your celebrity. Now you are our Confucius, our Dalai Lama, our Pope. Not even the great founder of our movement enjoyed such lavish aggrandizement. They're infatuated with you, the media. Wittingly or otherwise, you represent us. You and your every misstep. And now they think we advocate infidelity. We're the ones getting castrated over this. Are you following me Ben?"

"You want me to stop fuckin her."

"I want you to stop fucking us," Wolf hissed. Then he seemed to think better of his approach and paused to recompose himself. "You're an actor Ben. Not a particularly talented one, but one of the brighter stars this town has seen in recent memory. Just how long did you think you could get away with it?"

"I don't know. Couple months."

"Couple months. Couple days. Couple years. What's the difference. It's all sacrificial in a way. And for what. The sex? The thrill? The danger? Do you love her?"

"I don't know. Somethin like that."

The glimmer in Wolf's eyes was one of shrewdness and bewilderment, as if to say one day you're going to have to answer for yourself and whatever will you do when that day comes. "Tonight I'm issuing a statement. Going public. Condemning this whole affair. Condemning you. Banning you from the Convent. At least until your name stops cropping up in the headlines."

"What do you want me to do?"

Wolf didn't like that question. He sat up straight and buried his head in his hands. Then he frowned and leaned back in his chair and shrugged his shoulders with contempt.

"When you look out your window in the morning what do you see?" Bugs didn't answer. "I see change. I see a society on the brink of collapse. No matter how you slice it the signs are all around us. No matter what you believe in. You're aware of it. You have to be. It's more than obvious. It's transparent. A storm is on its way. Some might argue that it's already here. And when it breaks it won't matter how hard you've tried to believe or just how many times you remember fucking her. We've got debts to repay and our time is almost up."

"Yeah. Somethin like that," Bugs muttered dryly, scratching his head.

"Get your ass out of here Ben."

Bugs closed the door behind him and stood alone and cold in the pitchwhite hallway with his head down and his hands folded soberly at his back and his knees wobbling like jelly underneath him. He squared his shoulders and stood hunched against the wall, gazing silently at his shoelaces. Thinking.

The elevator ride seemed to take longer than usual. When the doors slid open he staggered out into the humid air and followed the long sloping access ramp to his car. He fumbled for his keys and opened the door and slipped inside and slumped dejectedly against the seething black leather and groaned in the thick heavyhanging air. He stared out at the glittering cityscape below, an endless hash of silvery roads and bridges and highways all hugging the dry cracked terrain at every niche and curve, weaving delicately between tall mirrored buildings and over lumpy hills on into the distance.

He sat up slowly, adjusted the rearview mirror. The sun framed squarely between two skyscrapers.

And then the car lurched forward and his neck snapped hard against the seatback. Airbags exploding in his face. A cloud of thick gray dust flittering across the dash. Dented plastic popping amid the sound of shattering plexiglass. He could feel the front tires shunting through the high chainlink fence, hovering in midair, gravity yanking him down. He pushed his eyes up over the jostling airbags and saw the crowded citystreet dangling in a strip of windshield far below, cars the size of ants streaking up and down the intersection, bobbing in and out of view. 

Then the back tires swung down and caught the hot asphalt and clung on for dear life. Arms outstretched he forced himself blindly through the door and leapt for solid ground. Face scraped by pavement. Choking on blood. He could hear the wheels spinning, the parking brake squealing helplessly, shards of broken glass crackling beneath churning rubber tires. Then a long drawnout whoosh and an eerie ethereal silence, shrill police sirens wailing somewhere in the distance.

The car landed upsidedown on top of an empty pickup truck, flattening like a tincan on impact. One loud earsplitting crunch. Chunks of mangled plastic raining down on pedestrians. Carhorns blaring endlessly. Bystanders running and screaming and ducking for cover. Nicked by falling glass. Then the dust settled and so did the quiet.

Bugs rolled over. Heart pounding. Sunlight slathering across his eyes. Engine idling nearby. He let the blood dribble from his mouth and jammed his shoulders and craned his neck and saw the broad front tires of a large fourdoor sedan. Front bumper caved in, dragging in the pavement. The door swung open and slammed shut. Bluetrimmed sneakers and dark denim jeans came wobbling toward him.

She wore a loose white blouse and her light gray fur shone almost purple in the beaming sun. Ears like giant antennae. She stood gazing down at him, eyes as clear as the sky that framed them.

"What's up honeybunch," he drooled.

His wife knelt down beside him and used a handkerchief to wipe the blood and sweat from his grinning face. Then she balanced a cigarette on his lip and lit it and watched the smoke roll down his throat and crinkle out through his nose and vanish hotly into thinair.

"Did you tivo the Dodgers game last night?" As he spoke the cigarette quivered on his lip and toppled to his shirt.

Her blue eyes narrowed but she didn't say anything.

"I heard they won but don't ruin it for me."

* * *

"Hi. My name's Dwight Howard. I play professional basketball for the Orlando Magic. How's that?"

"No no no," grumbled the director, arms folded about his chest, thick black bifocals riding high on his wrinkled nose. "Too rigid. Sounds like you're reading from cue cards."

"I am readin from cue cards."

"I know I know I know. Just try it one more time. Come on. Real casual."

"Okay," he sighed, sitting up straight and cracking his neck and scratching at his chin with one enormous hand. "I'm ready."

"Still rolling."

"What up world. It's Dwight Howard, starting center for the Orlando Magic."

"Okay okay okay. Maybe not that casual. Try it again."

"Again?"

"Don't think so much this time. Just introduce yourself. You know. The way you'd do a stranger."

"A stranger?"

"A white stranger."

He snorted at that and shook his head and went on. "Hi. I'm Dwight Howard. I play professional basketball for the Orlando Magic."

"You're reading again."

"Can't we move on to somethin else?"

"We haven't finished our first shot yet."

"Just cut it together."

Gossamer left his stolen blue fourdoor in the grocery store parking lot across the street from the studio and walked out amidst the streaking throughtraffic with his hat low and his dark leather jacket hiked up about his neck. Cars dodging all seven feet of him like trained stuntdrivers, leaning on their horns and swerving in and out of lanes with rehearsed precision.

The building lay out before him. A great white box, a dozen smaller boxes stacked on top of it. In the winding driveway he stopped and stared up at the smooth windowed walls and he thought he could see someone fidgeting around in almost every one of them. Then he walked around the building and went in through the back entrance and closed the door behind him and nodded at the receptionist and followed the nearest hallway to a long curved tunnel marked Press Only.

At the end of the tunnel a cop in a dark blue uniform with a pistol and a taser at his waist stood waiting for him. Gossamer nodded. Courteously.

"Excuse me sir. Press only beyond these doors."

Gossamer stopped in his tracks and stood towering over him. "You should let me through."

"I'll need to see some ID."

Gossamer smiled. "Everyone wants to see ID." He unholstered the silenced nine millimeter from the crest of his waistband and pushed it to the man's forehead and watched the bullet pull through like a washer on a string. A thin red cloud draping the cold linoleum, he took the cop by the collar before he crumpled to the floor and dragged the newly vacated body to the restroom at the end of the hall.

Dwight Howard sat hunched on the edge of the breakroom table, bowls of catered snackfood piled high at his back, wired red stagephone wedged tightly between his shoulder and his ear. Stagehands and technicians jetting in and out of view and shooting him awkward glances while his manager's small glowing voice sang at him through the receiver.

"This is a great thing you're doing Dwight. Genocide. It's a huge issue over there. Unfortunately we as Americans are essentially numb to it."

"And an infomercial's gonna wake us all up right?" He rolled his eyes as if she were standing right in front of him.

"No. I'm not that naïve. But it's a start."

"I don't like it. These people, they don't understand me Lola."

"Sure they do."

"No they don't. They look at me but they don't see me. They see the young black millionaire. They see the NBA scholarship. They don't like it. They think I don't deserve it."

"You're imagining things."

"Am I. What about you? I read the papers. I watch the news just like everybody else."

Lola cleared her throat dismissively. "That's a personal matter."

Dwight flashed a toothy grin at no one in particular and sat munching nachos from a paper tray balanced across his lap. "Sleepin around with married clients? How's Bugs been holdin up lately? I met him once. Always was a big fan of his movies."

"We'll talk about it sometime. I promise. Right now I've got angry voicemails coming out of my ears. Literally. When do you leave LA?"

A long glob of melted cheese dribbled down the front of Dwight's polo. He sighed and set down his tray and grabbed a handful of napkins and set to thumbing at the dark yellow stain. "Lakers game tomorrow night," he grumbled.

"We'll set up an appointment. Just don't go running off without telling me."

"Yeah. Same to you."

Gossamer dumped the dead man's body in the furthest bathroom stall and locked the door and stood studying himself in the spotless mirror for a long time. Then he bent sharply over the sink and flicked on the faucet and cupped his hands underneath the jet of cool clear water and watched it pool inside his palms. He drew it to his lips and drank in long quiet slurps. Then he refilled and drank again. When he was finished he stood blinking his large black eyes and gazed down at his chalky white sneakers.

Scuffed.

He snatched up a roll of paper towel and slumped to the hard tile floor and wrenched off his shoes and sat dabbing at them gently and rubbing out the dirt.

The door swung open and a man in a collared shirt and tie came wandering in and froze and stood awkwardly in the doorway. Gossamer gloved the pistol off the floor beside him and shot the man in the chest and watched him buckle and slide down the wall in a heap. Then he waved the smoke from his eyes and returned to polishing his sneakers. When he was finished he pulled them back on and put the new body with the old one and took another sip of cold tapwater from the faucet and went out into the hallway.

The corridor snaked past offices, storage rooms, watercoolers, cameras. He trotted across the set drawing strange looks from several chatty crewmembers, refusing to stop for any of them.

When he reached the dressingrooms he stopped and stood scanning the hallway, taking his time to read the small handwritten nameplates plastered across the front of each door. He recognized only one, turned the handle and went in.

"Gimme a minute," Dwight mumbled casually, pulling on a crisp white teeshirt, stained polo lying crumpled in a pile at his feet.

Gossamer shut and locked the door behind him and loosened the pistol from his waistband and stood staring at Dwight for a long time.

"I said gimme a minute," he repeated.

"We've got all the time in the universe brother."

Dwight eyed him suspiciously. "What's your name?"

"I have many."

"Pick one."

"I'd rather not." Gossamer moved further into the room and sat down next to a huge vanity mirror and brandished his pistol and watched Dwight's eyes widen like globes.

"What's that for?"

"Nothing. An insurance policy. Sit down. Please."

He did.

"You and I, we share a great deal in common," Gossamer said. "Our backgrounds. Our origins. Our ancestries. They're all connected. We are connected. We are one and the same."

"Yeah yeah. I understand dawg. Whatever you want I can get it for you. No sense in hurtin nobody."

"I would never dream of hurting you brother. I've looked up to you since I was very small. You've always been something of a hero to me."

"Yeah yeah. I remember that. Look I ain't got no money on me man."

"I'm not here for your earthly moneys brother. I'm here to restore you to your rightful place in this universe. To the throne of your ancestors. To the forefront of our valorous fleet. You needn't worry. The revolution has come and gone. Those who drove you into exile are now but distant unpleasant memories. The entire world awaits your return."

Dwight froze. Heart pounding harder than during any game.

"You don't understand," Gossamer murmured unfortunately. "They've changed you. Fundamentally. But you must still feel it. Somewhere deep inside you. You must still sense it. You must know who you really are."

"My name is Dwight Howard. I play professional basketball for the Orlando Magic."

Gossamer sat staring at him for a long time. Then he scooted closer in his chair and leaned forward with the pistol balanced firmly on his knee and whispered, "You are so much more."

Dwight didn't know what to say. His upper lip quivered. His left hand balled into a tight fist as it often did when he became anxious, fingernails biting into his skin.

"You have two choices," Gossamer offered, leaning back in his chair, entirely straightfaced. "Come with me and relearn the truth. Or die. Right here."

* * *

This time he wasn't taking any chances. He left the dog bundled in a plastic kennel in the backseat of the truck and clambered out onto the cold dry plain alone.

The night sky was full and broad and clear, dotted with tiny shimmering stars, the sunweary 

landscape flooded with bluegray shadows. It was an eerily dissimilar place at night. No cattle. No draft animals. Everything packed up and tethered and tucked away until morning. He felt alone. He felt powerless.

The bulging black duffelbag slung over his shoulder contained a fully loaded tape recorder, a legal pad for handwritten notes, a mountain of unused pens and pencils, a stapler, a holepunch, two empty threering binders, a digital camera, a laptop computer, the Bible, a cheap western novel, an extra ream of blank white paper and an old CD player and broken headphones. Everything he would need for an interview of this magnitude, and more. He shouldered all of it and strolled out across the lawn toward the barn.

When he reached the short wooden gate surrounding the barn he paused and stood hunched over the top rail, squinting into the blackness.

No movement. No sound. Only the crickets and the swaying of the trees, the wind combing silently through the deserted pasture.

He opened the gate and went on through.

The barn door was locked up tight and the lights were off. He stalked around back and set his bag in the loose gravel and stood scanning his surroundings for signs of life.

Sated in blackbrown rust a crooked netless basketball hoop jutted awkwardly from the paintchipped wall of the barn. On the ground beside him lay a worn leather ball, dark textured leather smoothed down to a fleshy colorless skim. He picked it up, juggled it coolly between his palms. Seconds later the ball arced up off his fingertips and dropped cleanly through the rim with a dull metallic clang and died on the hard gravel below and rolled off into the bushes.

Daffy smiled and picked up his bag and set off across the lawn toward the unlit farmhouse.

The front door was open and the screen unlocked. He stood peering in like an unwelcome guest and knocked tentatively on the wooden doorframe. The screen rattled and fell through, landing hard on the dusty living room floor beyond with a loud obnoxious clatter.

"Perfect," he muttered to himself, setting his bag down and glancing around uncomfortably.

He eased open the door and slipped inside and stepped over the broken wiremesh screen and propped it slantwise against the wall next to the television. He looked around. An old brass floorlamp shone brightly at the end of the hallway. On top of the square coffee table lay a polished 20 gauge shotgun, stock decorated with elaborate gold platelets and antique carvings. Doublebarreled. Coppercolored shells scattered about the ornate turquoise couch. He took up the shotgun in both hands and examined it in the soft yellow light. He wondered if it was loaded but couldn't figure out how to unlock the firing chamber. After a while he gave up and set it back down on the coffee table where he'd found it.

He wandered aimlessly through the abandoned house peeking into each cramped unkempt room as he slogged on by. Bedroom. Bathroom. Study. All dark and deserted. Crammed with open cardboard boxes, papers strewn about. Drafty and dank and swirling with giant green houseflies bumping and banging into things.

A thin black sliver laid up in the cobwebbed ceiling where the attic door hung open at the end of the hallway. Recently used. He stood staring up at the weighted pullstring for a long time contemplating what to do. Then he reached up with one hand and flung open the trapdoor and a long rickety wooden ladder came tumbling out before him like the secret entrance to some long forgotten Egyptian tomb. He placed one foot on the first rung of the ladder and leaned gazing up at the hard solid blackness. Then he clambered up the rest of the way and poked his head through the attic door and glanced around suspiciously.

His eyes didn't take long to readjust. The ceiling was low and vaulted. Wooden supports bent perpendicular to the floor, crawling with tiny white termites, marching black ants. The whole place damp and musty and humid, rife with the smell of aged copper and lead and rotting hardwood and stale urine. A row of dustladen file cabinets in one corner, sealed and latched up tight. A bunch of old mops and pushbrooms racked up in another. Huge trunks packed to the brim with outdated clothing and jewelry. Busted useless tires. Cluttered coils of spare rope and chain.

Behind him a wrinkled plastic curtain dangled loosely from the rafters, streaked with mold and dust and dirt. He pulled himself up and stood watching it with his narrow shoulders rolled, head bowed to the low claustrophobic ceiling, gazing intently through furrowed eyebrows.

Slowly he made his way across the room, plywood floorboards creaking and groaning sorely under his weight. He ducked below an empty spiderweb and around a stack of ducttaped cardboard boxes. Then he knelt down and reached across his body and took the curtain by its dogeared corner and drew it back with a swish.

A pair of bright blue eyes appeared before him. Two big gleaming ovals like gaping portals into some forbidden world. They studied him coldly. Flickering in the shadows.

He could smell it. Like hot tar. Like decay. Those eyes rose up and inched toward him with a low curious snarl. A long wet snout emerging from the darkness. Red chipped teeth bared. Blood on its breath. Long pink strands of saliva spread between jagged incisors.

He backpedaled and lost his balance and dropped sharply to all fours, crabwalking clumsily toward the ladder. It kept on coming. Those bulging blue eyes like bright clear firmament reflected in glass marbles. He couldn't look away.

Suddenly the ground gave way underneath him and he went spiraling helplessly through space, landing headlong on the faded hardwood floor below. He flopped hard onto his stomach and blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to his eyes swung upward and he saw the great black creature barreling down the ladder after him. Shaking off the pain he scrambled to his feet and staggered down the hallway into the shadowdraped living room and snatched up the antique shotgun on the table and fumbled for the trigger. Hard blunt claws dug into his shoulder, tore through his jacketsleeve. The huge beast tackled him to the floor and pinned him to the ground. Enormous misshapen fangs snapping wildly about his throat. He thought it might've bitten him. He didn't care. He cocked his elbows and wedged both barrels square into the creature's soft wide underbelly and pulled the trigger and held his breath and prayed to God that it was loaded.

Like a knife plunging through its gut the explosion sent a frothy surge of warm red blood and bile gushing and gurgling all over him. Hot stale breath rippling down his neck. A labored lifeless groan. Then nothing.

Daffy rolled clear and stood shakily to his feet, shotgun clasped tightly to his bloodsoaked chest, over his thundering heart, head still reeling. Gasping for air he gazed down at the big dead thing and immediately regretted it.

It was an old rotweiler, small round ears cropped and holepunched, brown and mossy green with infection. Bleached white ribs skirted diagonally from the rim of its crooked spine, punching through strands of taut pink skin along its bloated ugly sides, dark crimson shadows rising underneath. Its flared black snout was wet with mucus and saliva and blood, split from end to end. Bulky black paws sprouted from its thin forelegs like giant clawed frying pans chipped and packed with dirt. Puckered flesh hung loosely about its collarbone, its forehead, its abdomen.

Daffy turned and looked away, suddenly very cold and lightheaded and short of breath. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the quiet curved glass of the darkened television set and felt his stomach churn and buckle and sink like a stone. He drew one hand to the side of his neck and grimaced and held it to the light and gazed down into his open palm. Gobs of oily black blood streaming down his forearm, dripping from his fingertips, long purple beads plunging silently to the floor.

The earth seemed to shift all around him. Spinning wildly. He dropped sharply to one knee and leaned hard against the coffee table and allowed the shotgun to roll harmlessly from his grasp. He felt the air burning in his lungs and stared down at the huge dead rotweiler and its taunting blank blue eyes as yet more blood came spitting from the wide black gash along his neck. The walls were made of jelly. He could feel the cold empty solitary blackness irising steadily toward him, shutting it all away. The world was but a blur.

And there in resignation did he lay. And there in submission did he sleep.

* * *

Special thanks to Acosta Perez Jose Ramiro for Spanish translation.


	4. IV

Wily stood alone on the lip of the ridge squinting through the lenses of a pair of German twelve power binoculars, red bandana coiled loosely about his forehead, sleeveless workshirt laden with perspiration, rifle slung floppily over one shoulder. From where he stood he could just make out the wreckage cooling in the dark blue shade. Little under a mile out. Broken chunks of steel like crumpled newsprint grinning on the horizon. Beyond the crashsite the narrow interstate rippled softly in the setting heat. Miles of empty black strip rode on into the distance and vanished amid the charcoal hills.

He allowed the glasses to slip weakly from his hands to where they dangled by a leather strap around his neck. He set to rummaging through his pockets and emerged gripping a little white box between his thumb and forefinger. On its frontside a winking green light flashed in quick succession.

This was it. This was the one.

He chucked the rifle down ahead of him and slowly descended the ridge. He couldn't hear the wind rippling in his ears, only a dull undulating buzz, a low crinkling, like a detuned radio crackling in his skull. He hadn't heard a sound since takeoff.

The signal grew stronger as he approached the rubble. The sinking sun cast an expanding shadow across the long flat bajada while the dying heat glowered at his back. He pushed back the folds of his wet bandana and used his forearm to dab at his brow and pulled the bandana back down over his eyes. Still about 50 yards out. The tracking device vibrated in the palm of his hand, chirping loudly though he couldn't hear it.

When he closed within 20 yards the signal had begun to weaken. He rapped on the side of the machine with two fingers and even straightened the antenna but the reading kept on fading.

He looked up and back again. Then he set off running. Fifteen yards out. Ten. Five.

Suddenly he was upon it. He stood straddlelegged in the middle of the crashsite catching his breath. Then he went up to the giant fuselage and poked his head inside and reached down with either hand groping for the big metal strongbox that should've been there. His fingertips scraped only dusty steel at the bottom of the capsule and came up empty. The signal was still receding.

He yanked the rifle off his shoulder and took off up the valleyridge, emerging along the edge of the interstate. Near the roadside he could make out a big brown ball of disheveled fur draped in rags tearing rapidly down the highway, already several yards away, something large and black and rectangular draggling along behind it. He jammed the tracking device back into his pocket and leveled the rifle and steadied his eyeline down the scope and fired.

As soon as he heard the gunshot Taz hit the pavement and watched the bullet go careening over his head. He turned and glanced jerkily over one shoulder. A blur of color set against the glowing orange sky. Tall and lanky and thin. He jumped to his feet and latched the handle of the strongbox between his jaws and started off running. He wasn't sure why.

Wily sprinted after him but the hunched gangly creature was too fast and already too far ahead. The coyote stopped and stood panting heavily. By the time he ejected the bolt from his rifle and reloaded the thief was but a miniscule dot on the horizon, vanishing quickly into the fading light. He set the rifle down blunt end first and stood leaning there with one hand clamped firmly over the barrel. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the tracker and gazed blankly down into his open palm, the signal slowing and fading like a sputtering heartbeat.

Then he sank to the hard resin ground and let the rifle clatter to the pavement alongside him and laid down flat on his back, spreadeagled. Sky cleaved down the middle, blue and orange, stars and sun. He threw off his bandana and closed his eyes, chest heaving up and down, ears twitching but not hearing.

He'd hiked all day under the punishing sun. Clawing through piles of smoldered rubble. Looking, not finding. Only to watch some filthy stranger make off with his equipment. The blackbox. The only piece of slag that mattered. He was exhausted.

He laid there for a long time gathering his thoughts in stillness and in silence, gazing up at the peeking white stars, eyes fluttering. Slowly he fell asleep.

He had dreams. He dreamed about chocolate. Sweet milk chocolate. Seated alone at a picnic table beneath a big green oaktree eating chocolate.

When he awoke he could feel the sunrise. Long yellow blooms sprouting in the distance, climbing over jagged ridges into the sky. He sat up massaging his back, wiping loose dust and dirt and sand from his fur and snapping his fingers in front of his face. Even deafer than before. He pressed his ears flat against his skull and ground his teeth together and squeezed his eyes shut tight, forcing out warm, salty, frustrated tears. The world seemed lonelier than ever now.

Shadows hung thick along the valleyfloor where sunlight had yet to touch. He plodded down into the basin and set to searching among the rubble for any valuables the thief may've left behind. All he found was an old shopping cart packed to the brim with canned vegetables and meat and a flat leather basketball buried underneath.

As he sifted through the cart he could feel bright lights glimmering at his back. He glanced over his shoulder. As if watching him voyeuristically the headlights of a big black pickup truck sneered silently over the ridge. He turned and stood squinting at the little bulbs burning on the horizon. Then he grabbed his rifle and quietly skittered back up the hill.

The pickup sat parked offroad with its engine rumbling, windows rolled up and glazed beyond transparency. The sun reared up slowly behind it, sitting low on the hills. The engine died abruptly as Wily emerged from the valley and the driver's side door creaked open to reveal a tall bulky figure outfitted in vaguely western clothing. Wily froze and stood trembling as the massive figure tipped an outlandish hat and slowly rounded the front of the truck, silhouetted in the misty gleam of pink morning light.

"Get in," said Gossamer, opening the side door.

Wily couldn't hear him. He stood rooted to the dirt.

Gossamer blinked and stared coldly at the startled coyote. "Get in."

He wouldn't move.

Gossamer took him by the shoulder.

Wily sprang back, fear pulsing through him. He leveled his rifle and fired.

The bullet simply disappeared, evaporating in a wall of blue, its very atoms crushed into a fine powder and dusted away.

Gossamer had never stopped moving. He grabbed the rifle by the barrel and wrestled it from the coyote's grasp and flung it violently to the pavement. Then he lifted Wily off his feet and stuffed him in the cramped backseat of the truck and slammed the door.

Wily sat reeling, disoriented. He tried to steady himself in his seat, glanced around fearfully. A tall black man in a dirtied white teeshirt and jeans sat edgily beside him, a similar look of dread woven through the lines of his long young face. They traded glances as Gossamer sank heavily into the driver's seat and closed the door.

"Is this the one?"

Wily's ears shot upright. He thought he'd heard the faintest whisper.

"We've roped ourselves a prime specimen friend," answered a low creaking warble from the passenger's seat. "A prime specimen."

The passenger maneuvered around in his chair and turned to face his captive. Wily sat watching him, frightened yellow eyes as wide as dinner plates.

"Hello there little earthling. You can call me Marvin." A huge bronze war helmet rested low on his small round head, draping all but his piercing blue eyes in shadows. His neck was thin and wiry and Wily thought it looked like it shouldn't have been strong enough to support the weight of the helmet but somehow it did. His outfit was smooth and black, adorned with long swirls of small gray characters the likes of which he had never seen. They looked almost oriental, but with a grandeur and complexity all their own. His hands were like spiders. Four long slender fingers. No thumbs. They dangled in the air like streamers, gloved in the same thick black material as the rest of his suit.

"I'm going to speak with candor," Marvin said. "Experience tells me you earthlings like someone who can speak your language."

Wily could feel his ears closing up on him, those scattered whispers burning to static.

"You probably don't remember me, but we've spoken. We've spoken a number of times," Marvin went on. "Fifteen years ago you were part of the established order. You worked missile defense in a secret military installation under the Rocky Mountains. Somewhere along the line you defected. You exiled yourself. You smuggled plans for a prototype atmospheric defense system and pedaled them to first respondents on the interplanetary market. That's where I come in. Fifteen years ago we reached a settlement. Now I'm here to collect."

Wily listened. He could hear every word. That omnipresent voice resonating like a nightmare in his mind.

"You look scared," Marvin said. "Is it me? Do I frighten you?"

Wily cowered in his seat.

"Is it the helmet? Does it bother you?"

Marvin's bony fingers gripped the edges of the thick bronze globe and tipped the giant visor forward. Wily tried not to look.

Beams of bright pink sunlight clawed through the windowglass and licked at a small oval of cold inorganic features. Eyes like protruding photolenses, glowing blue. Dark nylon skin pulled hard against curved shallow bones. Spongy purple veins throbbing and spidering across his skull. The mouth a thin lipless slit. It spoke.

"We've had to bump up our schedule friend. We simply couldn't wait for the package to arrive. I couldn't wait. I have more important commitments on the table."

Wily nodded uneasily.

"We traveled 200 million miles to get here. Do you have any idea how boring of a ride that is?"

Gossamer snorted.

"You must understand," Marvin said, "all we need are those space plans and we can put this whole ordeal behind us. Now where are they?"

Wily didn't answer.

Marvin stared at him for a long time. "Look," he sighed. "Here's my read on the situation. You're a little intimidated. It doesn't take an empathist to see that. I'm not one of them. But if you won't open up, I'm going to have to open you up."

"He can't hear you!" Dwight blurted out, hands trembling.

"He can hear me!" Marvin hissed. "He just can't hear himself."

And they all climbed out of the truck, Gossamer shoving Wily to the hard black pavement and pinning him there while Marvin replaced his enormous helmet and Dwight stood looking on.

He watched them holding down the terrified coyote, Marvin clambering onto his chest, pressing his thin palms to Wily's temples, squeezing, pulling, tearing the memories from behind his screaming yellow eyes.

He stood there helpless and empty and every so often Gossamer would grin up at him with glowing expectations and scowl at the horror on his face. He wanted to see Dwight smile and laugh. He wanted to see him remember that this was their way and the only way and the way he used to know so well and hold so straight. But everything was a blur.

After a while the coyote stopped struggling and his arms stopped flailing and his bandaged feet stopped kicking and his eyes glassed over and laid blank upon Marvin's shadowed face.

Dwight watched as Gossamer helped them both slowly to their feet.

"That way," Marvin gestured, tipping the visor on his helmet and pointing down the interstate.

Then the four of them got back in the truck and drove off.


	5. V

Daffy whipped his head out from beneath the cold clear water and screamed at the top of his lungs. Grinding pain rocketing through every aching tendon, every weary muscle. Something forced his head back under. His screams turned to gurgles, scattered and bubbled silently to the surface.

Three blinding white lights buzzed and blazed wickedly overhead, rippling through the frothy shallow water.

He could feel something poking at his neck. Something sharp and cold and metallic, like a small knife or a pin. Long black fingers of blood snaked through the cool blue water.

He held his breath.

More poking and prodding and cutting, flaying away the skin. Blood swirling toward the surface forming long dark islands, blotting out the light.

He sputtered, sucked a breath of ripe freezing water. It rolled slowly down his throat, then evaporated instantly inside his lungs as if he'd breathed in nothing but air. He sucked in more. There was something fresh and clean and almost sugary about it.

He could see his own blood thickening in the narrow blue plane but he couldn't stop gasping for air. Getting weaker. Eyes flittering weakly in the shallow pool.

Then he was still.

When he awoke again he was dry. His head pressed flat against a slab of cold unforgiving steel. He felt that he could move his arms and legs and even get up and walk around if he wished, but strangely he had no desire to.

Those three pinsized bulbs still burned whitehot in the high ceiling, glowing red splotches imprinted on his irises. All around him the air felt close and tight and claustrophobic, as if he were surrounded by a thin layer of invisible glass.

When he swallowed he could feel something stiff and rigid and metallic scraping against his adam's apple.

One hand went slowly toward his throat.

"You just hold your horses boy," said Cecil. "You ain't in the clear just yet."

Dazedness washed over him. He tumbled back to sleep.

* * *

Bugs Bunny's eyes flashed open. He sat up and looked around.

Fire engines blocking off the intersection. Police cruisers. LAPD. A squealing ambulance idling noisily nearby. First responders scuttling rapidly back and forth, gathering around his overturned car and the flattened pickup truck beneath it. Thick gray gasoline spouting from the tank, feeding the harsh red tonguelike flames skirting off the pavement.

"Sir please! You're hurt! You're hurt!" two paramedics shrieked in unison, rushing to his side.

Bugs didn't believe it. He fought them off with either hand and unraveled the straps binding him to the gurney and slunk restlessly to his feet.

"I'm fine," he slurred. "I'm fine."

"Sir your face!"

He shook it off and slowly stumbled toward the crowd of jostling firefighters gathered around his busted car and started clawing his way to the front.

A tall redheaded cop grabbed him by the elbow and wrenched him away. "Get back on the stretcher sir."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine sir. You've been involved in an accident."

The gastank sparked, then exploded. A colossal orange fireball knocking the entire crowd to its knees. The sky seared red. Black plumes of smoke flooded the street. Everybody coughing, staggering shakily to their feet, scampering for cover. Bugs jerked himself from the cop's grasp and staggered awkwardly toward the sidewalk. The officer grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him to the ground.

"You're in a lot of trouble buddy!"

"I didn't do nothin!"

"Terrorism!" barked the cop. "That's what this is! An act of terrorism!" He shoved Bugs against the ambulance and pinned him to the insignia. "You're goin to jail buddy. You're goin away for a long time. You won't see daylight where you're headed."

"I told you I didn't do nothin!"

The cop's freckled face only burned redder. "I saw the whole thing you lying bastard!" he bristled. "I saw you break custody! I saw you set it off!"

"Set it off?" Bugs stammered hysterically. "Set what off? I didn't set anything off!"

"I'll cut your lying fucking tongue out!" the cop sputtered.

"It's not my fault!"

"Liar!" His face contorted to an ugly, almost inhuman grimace. He stood nose to nose with his captive. His skin was cracked and scaly. His eyes withered and yellowed, pupils narrowing to sharp black slits.

Suddenly the pickup caught fire and a huge roar of flame snarled hotly through the air.

Bugs broke free and set off running as fast as he could.

* * *

"When you said interview I didn't kindly suspect that would entail breakin into my house and killin my dog," Cecil sneered, sipping coffee from a large pewter mug, eyeing Daffy not like a criminal but like an old friend gone mad with jealousy. "Still she got you pretty good. Went straight for the jugular just like I taught her."

Daffy sat slumped against the wall with his legs spread flat in front of him, hands cold and trembling in his lap.

"They say about 95 percent of people with major arterial injuries don't survive," Cecil mused. "You're one lucky duck if you don't mind me sayin."

"What is this?" Daffy rasped, clawing at his neck. Clamped to his throat was a tight metal band about the width of two fingers.

"Somethin I've been workin on."

"How do I get it off?"

"If you value your life I wouldn't worry about it."

Daffy's eyes grew wide.

Cecil snorted. "Short answer it ain't comin off. Believe me. It's for your own good."

"My own good? Why should I trust you?"

"You shouldn't. You shouldn't trust no one."

"What did you do to me?"

"Does it hurt?"

"I'll live."

Cecil nodded. "Pry that sucker off, then you might be singin a different tune."

"What did you do to me?"

The turtle took a long slow sip. "Did you see her?"

"See who?"

"My dog. Did you get a good look at her?"

Daffy grimaced.

"She did it to herself. Started right after they left. I always knew it wasn't nothin natural. Wasn't nothin of this world makin her do it. Whatever it was, they brought it with em. They shot her full of it. Same as the cattle."

"Who?"

"Them little green men," Cecil murmured. "From Mars. Or so they said."

"Martians?"

"If you want. Supposedly there's more than one planet they call home."

"So you have seen them."

"Seen em?" Cecil laughed. "They took me to their leader. They showed me all they had to offer. Knowledge. Customs. Technology. How else you think I could've saved you?"

Daffy looked around. Cecil's workshop was like a vault, lit by low domelights casting cool white cones over flat steel tables and cluttered workbenches. A small basin filled with fizzy tealish water stood at the head of a large padded operating slab. Daffy recognized it instantly. There was a long roll of white sheetmetal unfurled on a counter against the wall, gold circuitveins crisscrossing up and down the periphery.

Daffy sat up like a bolt of lightning. "Where's my stuff?"

"What stuff?"

"My stuff. My bag. I've got to write this down. Better yet," his eyes lit up, "why don't you come on my radio show. We'll shift some things around, book you whenever you're free. It's shortwave."

Cecil raised one hand dismissively. "That ain't important."

"Not important? This is huge. This is groundbreaking. You're a witness. You've got real concrete evidence."

"I told you it ain't important," Cecil glared.

Daffy shut up.

"This ain't a popularity contest."

"But if aliens really exist, don't you think people should be informed?"

Cecil leaned forward. "You at all familiar with the ancient Aztecs?"

He wasn't.

"They had this ballgame called _ullamaliztli,"_ the turtle explained. "Whenever politics got in the way of pleasure, whenever rulers had their disagreements, instead of goin to war with each other they'd commission sides to play this ballgame on a big court in the middle of town and to the victor went the spoils. Fair and balanced. So to speak.

"But that wasn't the only use they had for this game. Sometimes they'd use it in ritual sacrifice. Invade some rival territory, murder all the women and children, enslave the men and force em to play their way out of it. Of course they never won. The Aztecs had all the best players."

Daffy remained frozen. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"What do you know about basketball?"

Daffy arched his eyebrows. "Used to play in high school. Never went out for college ball."

"But what do you really know about it? Do you know who invented it?"

Daffy sighed and rolled his eyes and thought about that for a moment. "James Naismith."

"Bingo." Cecil nodded slowly. "James Naismith. Canadian gym instructor. Invented the game in Massachusetts in 1891. That's the story. But in reality he didn't invent it. He transposed it. He moved it."

"I'm not following."

"These Martians, they're conquerors. Ruthless, just like the Aztecs were. They've got enough military might to overwhelm every sovereign planet in the galaxy. But like the Aztecs they'd rather fight a proxy war. They'd rather play a game. A simple game. Like basketball."

"Basketball?"

"It's a Martian wargame. Always has been. And these particular Martians wanna use it as a means to conquer Earth. Make it look like they gave us a fair shake, a fightin chance. Get everyone on their side before they turn the tables."

Daffy sat in silence.

"You don't believe it," Cecil muttered.

The duck shook his head. "I believe it. I've seen it coming my entire life." He shuffled slowly to his feet and felt a small jolt of pain shooting up the back of his neck and winced. "We've got to get the word out. We've got to warn people about this."

"And just how do you suppose you're gonna do that?"

"We've got to go on air. Shout it from the highest rooftops. Print up flyers, blanket the city with them. Let everybody know their plan. Let everybody know they're coming."

Cecil laughed a cruel hysterical laugh and sipped his coffee slow and deliberate. "Don't bother," he murmured. "They're already here."

The room fell silent after that.

"You ain't alone," Cecil went on after a while. "I seen it comin too. People like us, we always knew the score. There's even some cult operatin outta Los Angeles that went and made a religion out of it. Say we descended from Martians down here on Earth and that one day they'll come runnin back to save us from our own destruction. Well they got one thing right. They was always comin for us."

* * *

The sun was high in the sky when a small red taxicab skidded into Lola's apartment complex and straddled the sidewalk in front of her building. Bugs paid the driver and hopped out and jogged across the lawn leaping over sprinklerheads and dashing up the concrete steps. He scanned the panel by the door and hammered the buzzer next to Lola's name and stood waiting in silence with his hands on his hips and one foot tapping dramatically on the cement.

"Who is it?"

"It's me. You've gotta let me in."

"Hold on."

Gears whirred inside the doorhandle and it popped right open. Bugs went in and pounded up the stairs to the third floor and started banging on Lola's door as hard as he could. When she let him in he pushed right past her and cut his way toward the bathroom and threw on the lights.

"What the hell happened to you?" Lola gasped.

He examined himself closely in the bathroom mirror, the long red gash running all the way from his forehead to his chin. Cutting through one eyebrow, peeling across his cheek and through both lips. He rubbed at it with the back of his forearm, left a huge bloody streak in his fur.

"Bugs what happened?" Lola pleaded. "Were you in a car accident?"

He watched her reflection wavering in the mirror, then he glanced back at his own. "Yeah. Somethin like that." He turned on her. "We've gotta get outta here."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'll explain when we're on the road. We've just gotta get outta here. You and me. Hurry up."

"I can't just up and leave."

"Why not?"

"Bugs I'm in trouble. Because of you I'm in trouble. I've already lost four clients. On top of that these fucking beat reporters keep leaving me condescending messages and banging down my door every three hours. Do you have any idea how quickly work disappears in this town?"

He didn't answer.

"You really are clueless aren't you."

"Look we've gotta get outta here," he said again.

"Forget it."

"You're not safe here. She'll find you."

"Who?"

"My wife."

"Honey? Honey did this to you? Is she out of her mind?"

"They're all outta their minds! The cops, they think I blew up half a city block downtown this morning!"

"The cops are after you?"

Bugs snatched a handtowel off the rack and pressed it gingerly to his face. "I was at the Convent this morning and they were goin on about benefactors and how the end was comin and how we've got debts to repay and whatever else and I don't know if I believe all that but there's definitely somethin strange goin on and I'm scared. For the first time in my life I'm really scared."

"Scared of what?" Lola muttered. "Some prophecy cooked up by a bunch of nutcase Star Trek junkies?"

Bugs clenched his fists in frustration. "This isn't a joke!" he blurted out. "I saw a man turn into a lizard right in front of me!"

She stood frozen for a moment and then she started laughing. "You're delusional."

Her words sizzled like hot gristle in the air. Bugs stood breathing heavily, blood trailing down his neck, staining his shirt. He stared at her, gave her a colder look than she'd thought he was capable of.

"Then why did I come back for you?" he said.

* * *

Daffy blinked and he was sitting in his truck with all his belongings cradled in his lap. His eyes took a while to adjust to the blinding midday sun glaring through the dustsmeared windshield. He could hear Chester whimpering softly in the backseat, clawing weakly at his kennel, starved.

Daffy touched his neck, felt the thin white collar biting at his skin. He sighed heavily and clumsily maneuvered around in his seat, fetching a can of dogfood from the dirty satchel in the floor. He broke the seal with a small pocketknife and pulled back the cover and offered it to Chester's long black snout. Then he unlocked the kennel and doled out a handful for the dog to eat. Chester gave him an odd sideways look, then he sat up flat on his haunches and craned his neck and licked the goo off his master's fingers.

When it was all gone Daffy helped the dog out of his kennel and set him in the passenger's seat and sat staring at him for a long time. He thought about Cecil's dog, thought about the huge chunks of flesh missing from her sides, the sharp blue eyes. He shuddered.

The truck started with a roar and rolled on down the long dirt driveway toward the mainroad. He watched the farmhouse slowly receding in the mirrors and only then did he truly begin to understand the severity of everything that had transpired beyond those gates.

He rode through a little immigrant town where battered mailboxes and sullen faces smeared by in a blur. They were all looking at him through those dark tinted windows, and they had such a way about them that he almost wondered if they could read his mind, if they could pick his thoughts as clearly as spreading out a newspaper. That blissful ignorance he'd grown so accustomed to had all but vanished.

He stopped at a gas station to fill up and went inside and bought a bottle of water and a bag of chips and as he walked up and down the aisles and as he stood awkwardly at the counter with change in hand he could feel their cold sunken eyes all glued to him as if they expected him to speak, as if they knew he harbored some terrible unheard secret. But for all his pontificating on the radio this lonesome secret had shied him down.

"You folks ever heard of UFOs?" he mumbled.

The cashier and the attendant both turned to him with broad indolent smiles. "You talkin bout that nutcase that live down the road from here?"

Daffy frowned. "You ever spoken to him?"

"Wouldn't think of wastin my time."

"What if I told you he wasn't a nut. What if I told you he had evidence."

"Evidence of what? Space aliens choppin up his chickens?"

"Real evidence."

"I'd ask you why he ain't never been on the news before. Why he ain't never been on the frontpage of the New York Times seein how he's got such great evidence."

"Probably the same reason you won't give him time of day," Daffy muttered.

They all glared at him. They didn't like him and they weren't about to consider him. They thought he was a yuppie. A cityslicker. A smartaleck. Too clever for his own good. Unamerican.

He paid and stormed out with his items and got back in his truck without filling up and gunned the engine and veered onto the interstate fuming. Small towns scattered and dissolved and morphed into cushy suburbs right before his eyes. Big lawns and minivans and children out riding their bikes in huge figure eights up and down their driveways. He pictured fires roaring on the hills, scorching the earth, entire neighborhoods flattened, lives destroyed. For now most of them would gladly sit and laugh at him in that same vain, alien, taunting, masochistic tone.

Conspiracy theorist conspiracy theorist conspiracy theorist!

The suburbs gave out a few milemarkers later. After a while he passed a big square sign that read, "Now entering Nevada." He set the car on cruise control and sat back lazily in his chair and watched the scenery roll on by, becoming sparser and sparser by the minute. Soon all vestiges of civilization had vanished and only gray sand and distant terracotta hills stood cut out before him. Tiny brown shrubs scrawled along the roadside. The occasional sign. Low powerlines zigzagging across the shrill flat terrain and over the countryside and out of view. A weird ladder of bloated white clouds ascending across the pitchblue sky. Sunlight gleaming off the windshield.

He rode on for a long time. He listened to music. He listened to country. He listened to reggae. He listened to everything. Whatever burned the radio dial.

Then the engine began to sputter and as the truck ground slowly to a roiling halt in the middle of the desert the dog's dark brown eyes bled fiercely and glowed the sharpest shade of blue.

* * *

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," Lola grimaced. "I must've been out of my mind."

"Yeah somethin like that."

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know. Somewhere outside the city."

"We've been outside the city for over an hour Bugs. You planning on fleeing the state too?"

"I don't know. Probably already have."

"Where are we?"

"Lola I don't know. Take a look at the map if it makes you feel better."

She opened the glovebox and dug out a crumpled California state map and a diagram of the United States buried under an old pair of broken sunglasses. She unfolded them both and sat studying them silently in her lap.

"We're in Nevada," she said.

"Nevada," Bugs laughed. "That's funny."

"No it isn't."

"You always told me you wanted to go to Vegas."

"Maybe some other time. Maybe when we're not being chased by police."

"We're not bein chased by police."

"How do you know?"

"My face," Bugs reasoned. "They couldn't recognize me."

"Bugs you're an actor. If they've been through a movie theater in the past two years they should recognize you regardless."

"But I've never had scars in any of my movies."

She rolled her eyes. "That's reassuring."

They rode on down the freeway, passing through little podunk towns and villages and bickering over every sideroute, every detour, every exit. All around them the land slowly degraded and by the time they emerged into rocky desert all discussion had ceased.

When they spotted an unoccupied dark blue Suburban stopped along the side of the road they exchanged weary glances and continued blazing down the freeway. About a mile later they came across a lone figure in worn bluejeans and a black jacket trudging solemnly through the dirt. They slowed down and stopped for him.

"What's your name?"

"Daffy. Daffy Duck."

"What're you doin out here?"

"Truck ran outta gas. There's a station up ahead about twenty miles."

"Need a lift?"

"Sure why not. Thanks."


End file.
